It’s been such a busy week I don’t really know how to start, so I’ll take Maria Von Trapp’s advice an choose the very beginning, since the last post anyway, which was Dali.

With James reduced to only one technological gadget (his mobile phone) tensions were running high, so when we arrived in Dali we proceeded straight to the police station to register the loss of Ruby and our other stuff. It was a long drawn out afternoon (six hours from start to finish) but the Dali police could not have been nicer. They arranged for an interpreter to come and meet us then drove us down to the new town, half an hour away from where we were staying, to register our police report. There was a very sinister looking chair with attached handcuffs and ankle shackles in the interrogation room which made us a bit edgy at first, but the interpreter assured us that our wrists and ankles were too big for it so they let us sit in normal chairs and go through the painful process of describing Ruby (small, shiny, covered in flag stickers) and her playmates. We emerged a few hours later with some official looking froms, all marked with a big red police stamp and, amusingly, James’ fingerprints, which he was asked to press over his signature on each version of our statements. Our interpreter must have noticed the sceptical look on James’ face as his fingers were being dipped unceremoniously into the red ink pad because he asked ‘don’t they do this in your country?’. James replied ‘only to criminals’, which the police found hilarious. When we were all done they found a couple of on duty PCs to drive us back to Dali old town in a police van – they didn’t speak a word of English but they both grinned at us, stuck the flashing lights on and jumped every traffic light on the way. We felt as though Interpol were after us.

Faith in Chinese authority partially restored, we spent a couple of days wandering through the very picturesque, packed streets of Dali old town, which are permanently teeming with well-heeled Chinese tourists and a handful of foreign backpackers. Dali has a beautiful mountain and lake backdrop and the old town is a perfectly preserved jumble of old buildings and cobbled streets – despite the many souvenir shops and the constant chaos of people it was a nice, easy place to recover from a miserable few days. There was even an English run bar (Bad Monkey – highly recommended) with live bands and a free pool table; perfect.

We’d planned to spend a few days hiking in the mountains then carry on North east to Lijiang but, for all manner of reasons that I won’t bore you with, we decided over several beers that we’d hit the six month travel fatigue barrier and we needed to be stationary for a little while. So we’re off to Beijing for a a few months. Running around like headless chickens at the moment trying to organise ourselves (James is madly gaffer taping his wounded rucksack) so I’ll continue when we get to Beijing…

 

Well readers, Jeannie and I have had an eventful few days which will remain memorable, but for the wrong reasons.  It’s tragic tale, so keep the Kleenex handy.

After spending a few days in Kunming we decided to take an overnight sleeper bus east to the border town of Ruili.  Ruili is the main border between China and Burma and promised both the bustling excitement of a dusty border town and the opportunity to head out into the countryside to visit a clutch of magnificent temples and pagodas.  Perfect.  We prepared to board our 8pm bus but were promptly headed off by a scrawny little fellow who proclaimed to be from the bus company and was here to collect our ‘luggage fees’.

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I shall begin the first blog from China with an understatement of epic proportions: it’s really, really big. I knew it was big before we crossed, of course – it looks massive on the map, it’s bigger than India and it holds 1.3 billion people. But it wasn’t until we’d spent five hours on a rickety, smoke-filled bus, passing through a wilderness of mountains, rivers and villages,  just to reach the first town of any significance (apart from the border town of Hekou)  that I realised just how insanely stupid it was to think we can see much of China in a month – extending our visas is a priority.

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Just a quicky – I’ve just discovered a new gizmo for my mobile phone which sends our LIVE location back to the blog so you can track us in real time. There’s a new map ‘where are we’ on the homepage which shows where we are, as long as my phone is charged and has a signal. I’ve also updated our map page too and you can see a live view of where we are on there too.

Feeling rather emotional today as we prepare to say bye bye both to Vietnam and to Jade and Rob, who are heading West to Laos while we go North to China. The last month has been absolutely brilliant fun thanks to the great company, the million games of spades we’ve played (always in completely good humour and with never a bitter word towards the winning team) and the fabulousness (and occasional chaos) of Vietnam. We loved it so much we’ve even made a video (I say we, I mean James)…

Over the past six weeks, Vietnam has continually stunned us with its unbelievably diverse, colourful scenery. Despite thirty years of war and decades of lax governmental conservation laws, it is one of the most naturally beautiful countries I’ve ever visited, and the northern mountains, our current location, are the icing on the cake.

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Here’s some photos from our short jolly to Ha Long Bay. We spent a few days on a boat cruising amongst the karsks, caves and floating villages, got drunk on Vodka that was cheaper than water, played silly drinking games with fellow travellers, swam in the sea (until the jellyfish closed in) and hiked up a huge hill with the mother of all hangovers. All in a days work for the intrepid, fearless explorers ;-)

 

Our overnight bus from Dong Hoi dumped us at 4am by the side of Highway 1 in Ninh Binh – a rather non-descript town two hours south of Hanoi.  We’re visiting Ninh Binh as it’s the closest town to the Cuc Phuong national park, a huge patch of tropical rainforest in a valley of limestone hills.  We rented motorbikes and headed to the park, the journey was amazing – we passed through incredible rural scenes of locals working in lush green paddy fields and herding cattle in the shadow of stunning limestone karsks.  The national park is one of the best we’ve visited so far.  It was peaceful, cool and full of sights, from the homes of prehistoric cavemen to 1000 year old trees.  We ate lunch before visiting the primate rescue centre, home to over 150 monkeys that have been rescued from all over Vietnam.  I was particularly fond of the langurs with their silver fur and orange faces and the long-armed gibbons (although I did have to question their rather lacklustre parental skills).

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Hue is definitely the most Francophile city we’ve seen in Vietnam, but it also shares one charming characteristic with Manchester – it sees a higher annual rainfall than anywhere else in the country. So after a laid back few days there, with a dodgy weather forecast looming, we decided to head North across the demilitarised zone and into Northern Vietnam – first stop, Dong Hoi, the best place to visit the Phong Nha Caves from.

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